Good Intentions

It looks like Net Neutrality is under attack again, this time by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA).

For those of you who do not know, Net Neutrality is a concept among Internet aficionados describing the fact that the Internet essentially belongs to all of us, and should remain that way. The fear among supporters of Net Neutrality is that ISPs could, conceivably, throttle off bandwidth to certain websites and only allow traffic on that ISP’s connections to other ones.

Let’s say Amazon and Comcast sign an exclusivity agreement. So, that would mean that the packets traveling from your computer to Amazon would be at a priority. Doesn’t sound too bad. But let’s say you want to go find a book at Barnes and Noble instead. So you try to load the page and…nothing. Comcast has locked off websites competing with Amazon because of that agreement. Or, perhaps you try to get onto the Barnes and Noble site, and suddenly you see a page saying you have been charged X dollars for accessing Barnes and Noble.

These are the fears of Net Neutrality supporters, and rightly so. ISPs could also implement tiered plans, where for a basic fee you get basic access to some sites, with more sites opening up based upon the more you pay the ISP.

The Internet needs to remain free and open for all. It has really replaced the landed media as the Fourth Estate; it keeps politicians, businesses, even religions accountable. I expect China to do the censorship song and dance game, not our own politicians here in the good old US of A, protected by that First Amendment thingie.

Net Neutrality should be a huge interest to lawyers though, because the Internet is the Old West for the law right now. It’s only been recently that statutes have even mentioned the Internet, and it’s really my generation and younger who are most used to it; in fact, I believe my generation was the first to actually grow up using the Internet. We saw it formed from BBS systems and newsgroups to Google Groups, Facebook, and WordPress.

My fellow law students, we should become the staunchest of Net Neutrality defenders. The Internet is inexorably tied up in our futures, and I for one will not tolerate restrictions or censorship (outside of things that are criminal, of course), especially by entities which are solely driven by power and money in the guise of morality (politicians and ISPs).